A distraught Queenstowner’s at her wits’ end over noise from idling buses – and fears the extended $2 service will worsen matters.
A bus stop just six metres from Krista Baker’s bedrooms is the terminus for the Fernhill service.
She says buses idling, sometimes for as long as 10 minutes, disrupt her and her two children’s sleep and vibrate through her single-glazed house.
With the new, more frequent bus service starting November 20, and running from 6am till midnight, she expects things to get worse – along with potentially more late-night noise from drunken revellers taking cheap buses rather than cabs to and from town.
“I’m not somebody that can survive on less than six hours’ sleep – I need eight hours, otherwise the wheels fall off.”
In addition, because the bus stop’s under-size, Baker says buses often block her driveway.
When she first wrote to two councillors in May, she admitted impending service changes had raised her stress levels one day.
“After constantly asking the drivers to move from across my drive or turn their engines off if they were going to stay a long time, I ended up in the street yelling at a bus driver that ‘I couldn’t handle it any more’.”
Local Ritchies bus boss Nyall Fraser has now come to the family’s aid.
He says he’s unilaterally changed the timetable to take out waiting times at her stop.
“The company policy is, no idling over four minutes – the problem over winter is there’s no heating when you turn the engines off.”
Under the new timetable, some services will go on to Sunshine Bay so the terminus will change for those.
He adds all but one bus will be replaced for the new service – “the new ones are a lot quieter”.
Meanwhile, Baker believes two spots near her house would make more suitable bus stops.
